The Last Photograph
by Wrestlr
6.
I woke when something smacked hard against my cage.
“Wake up, Filth!” Mick, and not looking happy at all.
Light. I could see.
I risked a glance at Justin’s cage. It was empty.
“Hey!” Mick slammed his fist against my cage. “Don’t try looking for your boyfriend. He’s already been taken away for his new training. I hope you two enjoyed yourselves, ‘cause there won’t be much of him left when the techies finish with his head. These cages are meant to help make you bond with your handler—they’re not a fucking game of musical chairs, sneaking in and out for your little blow-job session!”
Mick sounded like a jealous lover. Out of all though, though, one word caught my attention. I definitely didn’t like the sound of handler.
Mick slammed his fist against my cage again. “Hey! Pay attention. I was going to feed you before your lesson today, but now—I think an empty stomach will help you remember to pay attention in the future, Filth.” I watched him dump my liquid meal onto the concrete floor. “Well? Aren’t you going to thank me for not beating the crap out of you?”
“I ... Thank you, sir.”
“Shit.” He ran his hand across his head and scowled at me. “It’s time for your lesson. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” What I was ready for was Mick to open the cage gate. With room door open, I had an escape route. I could kick Mick’s face in, incapacitate him, stuff him in the cage, and have myself a five-minute head start before anyone discovered my escape. I could find Paul and get us the fuck out of there. No matter where we were, there had to be a way out.
“Whatever you’re planning, Filth, don’t bother.” Mick said. He showed me a bottle like the one he’d sprayed in my face at the ziggurat, an unspoken threat.
Mick opened the door. “On your feet, Filth.”
I began to crawl out of the cage.
A new voice from the doorway asked, “Is this the one?”
Mick whirled and exclaimed, “Sir! I wasn’t expecting—Yes, this is him, sir.” He hissed at me, “On your feet, Filth. The Leader wants a look at you.”
Okay, I could play along. I snapped to attention, a familiar posture from my Army days.
The new man stood in the doorway of my room. He looked vaguely interested and vaguely bored at the same time. He looked my naked body up and down. “So this is him,” the Leader said, as if undecided whether to be completely unimpressed.
“Yessir,” Mick gushed. “Excellent physical shape, as you can see. Wide-ranging military background, American Special Forces. Exceptional leadership skills. Already after only four days, his resistance level has dropped to nil. He’ll be ready for field work within the month.”
“Hmm.” The Leader walked over to me and eyeballed me close up. “What’s your name?”
“Filth, sir,” I barked in the way that always pleased Mick.
“Not your trainee name. Your other name. Don’t lie to me. You haven’t been here long enough for the training to take hold.”
“Peter, sir. People call me Pete.”
The Leader snorted and turned to Mick. “I think you still have more work to do. He is trying to pretend he is unaware of what we are doing. By pretending to be farther along, he intended to deceive us,” the Leader said.
Mick jabbered, “I agree, sir. I think he’s too dangerous to be trained the normal way. If you read my report—”
“Reports are bullshit. Still, you may be correct. Have the technicians map his mind, just in case we have to use more advanced procedures. His military skills and command experience will be valuable assets, but there are multiple ways to make his skills work for us.”
They were ignoring me. The door was open. This could be the slip-up I’d been waiting for.
The Special Forces made me a mad-dog killer. My hand-to-hand combat skills are impressive, if I do say so myself. Right then, Mick experienced my shoulder-to-stomach skills as I suddenly bolted not for the door but right for him. I caught him in the stomach and heaved. With the wind knocked out of him, he careened into that Leader guy and they both went down.
By then, I was out the door and into the hallway beyond. I turned right. I’m fast. I might have spent the last few days locked in a cage, but my muscles were still in good shape and they responded to the kick of adrenaline flooding me. Special Forces training taught me a lot about sneaking unseen and unheard, but right then I needed speed and distance instead, and my legs provided both. Running naked through the hallway beat being a passive prisoner, and I’ve never been shy anyway. But, I didn’t see anybody else around. I mean, no one—as if the facility was deserted. Maybe they only had a skeleton staff.
Identical doors lined both sides of the corridor. Some had numbers. Some were completely blank. One hallway seemed as good as another so I zig-zagged down several.
No turning back now. My plan was to find a way out. Find Paul if I could and take him with me, but find a way out and bring back the authorities if I couldn’t.
I paused in yet another hallway. How the hell did people tell them apart? I tried each door, quietly. All were locked.
One door at the end was unlocked. Overhead lights flickered on automatically when I eased it open. If the lights were off when I opened it, that meant no one had been inside for a while to trip the light sensor. I slipped inside. I needed clothes. I needed weapons. I needed something to give me an edge.
This was some kind of small storeroom, almost completely empty, except for a few cleaning supplies. What could I use as a weapon? An aerosol can: that might come in handy for blinding someone. A plunger: I popped off the rubber end and had a perfectly good wooden stick that I could use as a truncheon.
Armed, I slipped back into the corridor and continued on. A side hallway split off. Down it, I saw a bright red sign mounted at the ceiling—“Emergency Exit”—and an arrow pointing to a door with a window in it. It couldn’t that easy, could it? Only one way to find out.
Emergency exits usually had alarms, but I wasn’t going to pass up the first exit I’d found. Emergency exits usually don’t have guards. A quick peek at the corner of the window told me this one had two, both fit-looking men, standing in the area beyond, guarding what looked to be the exit. The guards wore nondescript uniforms but appeared unarmed. Apparently the Leader decided to have the doors covered just in case.
I needed a diversion, something to separate them. I rattled the aerosol can against the bottom of the door and waited. Sure enough, one of the guards investigated. The moment he stuck his head through the door, I cracked the plunger handle across his jaw, just short of hard enough to break it, then grabbed his head and slammed it down against my upcoming knee. The guard collapsed.
The other came at me. I blasted him in the face with the aerosol and ducked, and he rushed by me, blinded and clawing at his eyes and howling. I slammed the truncheon across the back of his neck and he went down.
Now the only thing between me and the door was twelve feet of air—
—And Mick, who tackled me from behind. “Got you, fuck-face!”
We went down. I twisted, but so did he and I still took most of the impact. I shoved him off me. Before I could reach the door, he was on me again, and we slammed into the wall. I went for his eyes with one hand. He knocked it aside with his arm, and his other hand was in my face with that spray can.
Fssst!
I went down. The world spun. Everything felt far away, like it was happening to someone else.
Fssst!
“Like that, Filth? Absorbed through the skin. Quite effective.”
Fssst!
I couldn’t seem to focus on anything. Everything seemed slow, dreamlike. My arms and legs wouldn’t move right. I found that really funny and heard myself giggling.
Mick picked himself up and stood over me. “I told him, you’re too dangerous to train the normal way. He’ll have to believe me now.” That struck me as funny and I snickered some more. He spoke into a little device. “We have him secured ... Yes, sir ... Yes, sir. I’ll bring him in right away.” He clicked it off and slid it back into his pocket. “It’s your lucky day, Filth. You’re skipping right to the hardcore plan.”
The guards hauled me up roughly to my feet—more giggles from me—and practically carried me along. Mick led us down a hall, then another. The identical halls struck me as funny, and I chortled most of the trip.
Mick led us into a room. Wherever I was, it wasn’t the ruins, or the resort town. The town had nothing this high-tech. Things here were newer. Spartan. Lots of surfaces that were white or silver or gray, antiseptic colors. I felt giddy, high, and something about the lack of color made me giggle. At some point, I caught my reflection in a mirror-like surface. I thought my multi-day stubbled, distorted reflection looked silly, and I laughed some more.
This new room was centered around a semi-reclining clinical chair. The guards dumped me into it. I tried to say Thanks, fellas but it came out, “Ankzz eyluhzz.”
Mick fastened straps around my ankles and wrists and neck immobilizing me. “I’m gonna enjoy watching this,” he said.
A technician began shaving my head. It tickled and I couldn’t stop grinning like a fool. Two other technicians moved in and affixed electrodes and other sensors to my head and chest. One put speaker buds into my ears. High-tech gear cupped my head, holding it firmly in place. Another found a vein in my elbow, and I felt a needle bite into my skin.
What I remember after that were flashes. Just images. No narrative. No continuity. The drug made me sleepy, but I fought it. It made the technicians moving around me seem like a dream—whispers around me, images of people moving here and there around me. I barely registered the sight of one before he was replaced by another. I felt a sharp pain bite at the back of my skull—I’d have winced except my head was held immobile. Words, images, a spot of nagging pain that eased into numbness. Was this some kind of brainwashing set-up? I heard about this shit while I was in the Special Forces. Images, words, all zipping by around me, until finally I couldn’t fight the drug anymore and the world slipped away from me.